


The Fairest of Them All

by chocolatemilk2



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:49:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocolatemilk2/pseuds/chocolatemilk2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock (Snow White) is accused of the murder of Queen Molly Hooper, the detective must do anything he can can to escape discovery. But what will happen when John Watson comes looking for help?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fairest of Them All

“So you want to know about Sherlock Holmes?” Lestrade asked, head bowed over a pint of brandy. The pub was dim, most patrons faired home for the night, only the drunkest slurring into their drinking songs, leaning into the wooden weight of the bar table. John Watson checked his shoulder, and nodded.

“They say he’s the most brilliant detective in all the lands,” John told him. “That he can spot any ill.”

“Find it yeah, doesn’t mean he’ll do any good in getting rid of it,” Lestrade griped. The bartender glanced over in curiousity, and Lestrade lowered his voice. “Look. Holmes isn’t worth whatever the King’ll throw on your head if he finds out. Even if I did know where in forests he’d buggered off to, it wouldn’t change the fact he’s a right ass about the telling. You’d be better off going to a simple witchdoctor.”

“I’ve been. There’s nothing they can do to help Harry; the worse ones sell me jars of dirt, put on a glamour and expect me to buy it, and the better tell me straight out. I need a cure for her. She’s the only family I have left.”

“Well. Not much you can do about poison. The curse of natural science, we call it back home. Those five fanged snakes, they take all the bloody chooks out. Nasty. Magic’s damn worthless when there’s a million antidote spells but a million ails in the first place. Just leave her be; if she’s destined to make it she will, and if it’s not, you can’t force her. They’ve done all they can.”

“I’m a doctor myself,” John said. “I’ve tried, but. Sense healing isn’t enough. There’s not much you can do, that’s why I need the best. I promise, whatever keep-safe agreement you’ve made with him, I won’t touch that. If he could cure Harry, I’m forever in his debt. I wouldn’t tell anyone where he’s hiding, or what he’s up to. I’m a veteran warrior. Swear it to sons.”

“Allright,” Lestrade sighed, “Allright. Keep your shoes on. Get another glass into you and settle, and I’ll tell you what little I know. But like I said, no one’s got a clue of anything. All I know is where I saw him last, and what the man was like. That’s it.”

“I’m all ears,” said John, taking a reluctant sip of mead.

“Well, there’s those old wives tales, from the days of the old queen. I must have been about sixteen when he was born. ‘Sherlock Holmes,’ they announced with arms open wide, ‘skin as white as snow.’ Don’t you believe it, those royal buggers, bet they never seen a ray of sunlight in their life. He was fairly pasty when I first found him on the team, a sort of tweedy thing with sword silver eyes. Had this ridiculous grey smithy jacket to match, you know in the fashion of capes those knights wear? We had half a mind to call him Red Riding Hood. He was distinctive though, other-wordly beautiful, and I’m not easily took in by that sort of womanly fancy. But you hadn’t seen a man the likes of it, he had this air about him.”

 

“Well, far on from that, he knew how to solve a crime. Had to check for concealment charms whenever he walked in a room because you never quite got how he did it. Sherlock could just figure things out from nowhere without any help. People that smart just don’t exist. Suppose he had lessons, but it was still incredible. I even caught myself deferring back to him accidentally once or twice. We were all horrible envious of him, held the highest levels of respect for his talent. There’re rumours he used to take recreational potions though, so we couldn’t technically take him onto the guard force. Sherlock was all a posh brat. One of those rude upper-class type of lads, but pretty sly for it. He used to embezzle my guardsman pins so he could sneak into peoples’ cottages. Professional, he’d sort you out all right, just not very conventional. You had to watch your feet with Sherlock Holmes around. If you caught Prince Holmes in a bad mood and slipped up there’d be the underworld to pay. And he only takes on the cases he likes.”

“So you don’t think he’d help me?” asked John, aghast.

“No guarantees,” Lestrade said. “If the poison was grisly enough. And that’s assuming he’s even alive.”

“But you think he is, right?” John persisted. “You think he’s good enough to save her?”

Lestrade stared into his brew for a few moments, considering. John thought he looked hopeful but doubtful all the same. He’d mourn him, if news hadn’t yet arrived of the death. Just rumours. “He’s great enough, definitely. But he’s a royal exile, not a saint. And the last I saw of him…”

A drunkard dropped a beer glass, breaking their reverie.

“I should really get back to the wife,” Lestrade decided. “It’s late, and all that doesn’t bear thinking about. If you care about your sister, you’ll go anyway.”

“But wait,” said John, standing up after Lestrade. “You haven’t told me of your last of him.”

“The last time I saw the prince of Holmes,” said Lestrade. “Was at the Apple Tree in Reinfall. The border to the apple tree is defended by Irene the Gray. Good luck.”

“I’ve never subscribed to luck, nor it to me,” John said, extending a hand. “I’m sorry to meet on such sombre terms. Maybe one day after this nasty business is gone we can have a proper merry drink.”

Lestrade clasped his hand brief, and gave him a lazy salute. “Looking forward to it. All my best to Harriet.”

John nodded, and frowned as he noted he’d been left to pay the tab. Scoland Yard definetly wasn’t the most hospitable village he’d been to.

But he’d survive the war, and if it killed him, he’d survive his sister.

 

 

  
_They say his eyes were as clear as the pull of fresh air on a winter’s mourning, his laugh as crisp as a shiny red apple._

_His skin was as pure as his mind. Simple logic coursed through his deductions and out his fingertips, through the small purse of his bowed lips. Sherlock’s interest in murder mystery was as clean as his shoes._

_Royal bastards always burn._

 

Winter blistered and blustered against the fair Queen’s skin. She stood out in the white cold, in the rose garden, examining the budding of her favourite flowers through the snow storm. She wondered how anything might survive the keen press of winter without furs, anything so fragile. The latest foal of her husband’s stallion had died only that year.

Blizzard pulled her gown into the air and flaked small snow against her lips, to shatter and melt. Violet plucked one rose head from the garden and pinned it behind her ear, regretfully turning back inside for duty and warmth.

A servant took her coat, a maid chatted to the gardener peasant. They fussed and would have tutted had she not been ranked. Violet adjourned to the drawing room, to be alone. It was where she spent the most of her time.

A deep frown resettled into Violet’s lips, that the brief adventure could not abate. Jim was upset. Jim wanted children. The unhappiness seemed to have carved into her soul. She was a breeding machine, raised calf for slaughter. Children born in winter had the lowest chance of survival. It was always winter in the united kingdoms.

There was something fundamentally wrong with Jim, that she felt when they slept together. It hadn’t been visible in the photos she had been offered proceeding their arranged marriage, but Violet felt that hollow upset in their initial encounter, their wedding day, when Jim had said absolutely nothing. As she thought of it, a tremble ran down Violet’s arms. Jim was a beastly monster.

Yesterday. How could he have mutilated that poor fool Carl Powers? Certainly he had deserved a scolding for swimming in their private lake, or more sternly a beating. Carl Powers did not deserve to be poisoned and drowned. Jim should not have drawn her to the lake side when he swam to observe his ignorant laughter and his growing screams, he should not have taken her against her will against the rocks and cold mud brambles and finished inside of her when his screams finally stopped.

The frozen lake sat along past Violet’s window, and Violet imagined the dead corpse of Servant Powers beating against the thick ice. She shuddered, and returned to work.

Red threat. Thread. Her long, curled hair bowed into her embroiding machine, tangling. Blizzard whistled and roared, slamming against the engraved frame of her window. Smack.

Violet flinched and the prick of the sewing needle struck.

From the pinhole on her finger, red blood ran. It sank into the white upholstery of the half-made blanket and stained.

“Oh, that I had a child white as snow,” Violet sobbed. “As red as blood, and as black as the wood of the embroidery frame.”

And it was to be, like Jim.

 

 

Some people say the old Queen died of misery. That the reject of her husband’s affection snapped her heart in two, that the visage of her king-like son brought her to throws of agony. The man with the kingdoms is as hot blooded as a ferocious dragon and in his pocket is a mirror as cold as a crystal. Everywhere he walks he leaves a blazing trail of smoke behind him, in the form of his conquered lands. He was born in blood in the ashes of war, his mother died in the passion of his regal jealousy. King James killed any man that questioned his title and murdered those who only thought of it. He is unquestionably the darkest wizard of all.

And Prince Sherlock Moriarty is the brightest, the brightest. There has always been talk that something so pure and dainty could grow in the shadow of such darkness, that the Prince’s casual malevolence does not reflect the sinister cruelty of his father. That Sherlock’s looks are unparalleled to the king James’; that no mere man could have born such angelic beauty, no devil. That the prince is a liar and the fair, modest queen was an adulter.

James Moriarty remembered his first words to Violet, on the death day of her father, the present monarch.

“The man with the key is king, and honey you should see me in a crown.”

And in his pocket, a mirror that could show him any truth.

 

He didn't look in the mirror, until that day.

Sherlock never wanted to see the beauty everyone else described, he couldn't stand the reflection of a wine glass or a lake or a sheeted pane of window. The lie of surface appearance, of ancestory, of nobility. But when he finally saw the truth it was an accident.

It was all an accident.

 

Duchess Molly Hooper liked cats. She liked daydreams and murals and portraits in her honour. King James was nice enough, for all that his reputation belayed. More than that, he was charming. He was precious and she was the girl with the nose to him.

Molly Hooper had only ever dreamed of the best; the closest friends, the kindliness neighbours. Perhaps it was inappropriate to lust after the young prince, but who, in his presence, could help it?

And perhaps it was inappropriate to lust after her step-son on her crowning, but Sherlock Moriarty was so fair. He was reasonable and logical in every facet of the word, he made objective decisions for the good of the crown. He told her she painted her lips too red for her skin. He never talked to James. It was as if they weren’t even related.

James Moriarty was brilliant, but Sherlock Moriarty was magnificent.

 

_Jim needed to know. It wasn’t a compulsion, it was a necessity. If there was ever a chance he wasn’t alone, that he wouldn’t always be._

_That would be indescribable._

_“Mirror Mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”_

_“You are.”_

_…Unbelievable._

 

 

Sherlock turned seven, and his father stopped being Richard Brook, the innocent smiles “I’m just a nice old king,” and became something much more feared, and much, else.

 

 

Sherlock sat in the graveyard, skimming stones against the gravestones, failing near terribly. He was alone: his manservant had long belayed his distaste of the stalk. Rash, primal, Anderson. As thick as a jester and as fat as a mister. Bored, bored, bored! Sherlock sat waiting, forever waiting for the sun to fall from the horizon so no one would see him undig the noble graves. The tree leaves were stirring, it mirrored his impatience. His brain would rot if he didn’t perfect the precise deductions by tonight. Sherlock ran over the steps in his mind, testing on a stray victim of object.

One, Observe: the tilt of sir Elgern Hiener III at an odditity to those around. Two: Links. Noble gravesite (of higher standard); tree roots from gateside possible interference, otherwise possible negligent digger, personal disfavour (not general social, not a reject if laid here), no active maintenance to readjust ridiculous slant. Thre: Infer. Hiener’s wife was a witch who kicked his grave instead of cursing it, Eljern was an egotistical sod who felt indebted by the world for his near-title and successive redundancy. Eljern invaded a few lands fruitlessly and was viewed as an embarrassment and wretch by everyone. Eljern committed suicide out of shame. The slant of his grave is the implicative bow of his head against humanity; his deathlike vulnerability is echoed by the tenders who aren’t sure if they have the authority to readjust his grave or if it would be blasphemy, the idiots.

No. Not good enough. He’s not. It’s not a deep enough analysis, it’s not enough successive conclusions from a single stimuli.

But Sherlock needed to be smarter than Jim. Jim would kill him if he grew bored of him. Jim is going to kill him.

Ex-Duchess Hooper clobbered up the stone stairs through Sherlock’s discontent with the salts for their circle. “Erm, Sherlock,” she spluttered, kneading her skirts together. “You’re not actually going to raise any dead tonight, are you?”

“Of course not, your highness, don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock said, snatching the salt and pouring a wide circle around his perch. Centred in the graveyard for maximum reach in all directions. Perfect for a summoning. “What preposterousness, et cetera, ad nauseum, finite-non.”

“I keep telling you to call me mother in privacy,” Hooper scolded, quietly and feebly.

“And I suppose you’ll entitle me ‘son-figure’?” Sherlock snapped. So entitled. Idiot for snaring herself in Jim. Idiot, idiots. “Shut up and sit.”

The queen awkwardly, obediently knelt into a cross-leg on the grass of the graveyard, and Sherlock stalked to the edge of the salt circle, extending one toe forward. From his cloak Sherlock pulled a riding crop and Molly shrieked a little as Sherlock slashed it down on his arm.

“Standard procedure,” Sherlock said, upturning the drawn blood from the lash on the edge of the salt circle. Molly oohed as the salt caught the red and a great bright red ring bursts up from the circumference around them, smothering them in light.

 

Sherlock smirked as the levels die down and steps out of the circle, making for the tool shed. He shoulder-barged it open (bathed in moonlight, a few seconds by the window is now enough), grabbing the moon-lit grave shovel which will be his bludgeoning weapon. Molly’s worried expression deepened as Sherlock made for sorry Elgern Heiner III and struck soil, until the anxiety appeared stone-carved into her face. Blood seeped into soil, enlivening it a rich brown, revitalizing.

“I thought we were just going to talk about the Yule ball,” Molly warbled. “There are going to be lots of foreign dignitaries—“

“I keep waiting for Jim to break you,” Sherlock muttered to himself. “Why hasn’t he done it yet?”

The answer, a great muffled groan from a being beneath the soil. Sherlock dug until he believed it adequate escape hold, until he saw his red blood splatter white bone and and raced for the salt circle, tackling Molly in his way.

Elgern Heiner hauled himself up from his dirt bed with his maligned, mal-aligned bones and his empty sockets were filled with dead maggots. Molly Hooper screamed and covered her yellow teeth with her hands. Sherlock carefully stepped to the front of the salt circle, watching red prevention magic translate physical reality to the spiritual and Sherlock spun the shovel and cracked the skeleton’s dead head and Heiner fell to the ground, reborn spirit fell.

“Your blood,” said Molly. “You dripped it—and it—you could be hanged, blood magic is illegal, when James hears--”

“James Moriarty won’t hear anything,” Sherlock purposefully stressed, whipping around. “He won’t. You won’t tell him. You hear me?”

Molly swallowed, eyes dropping down. Sherlock followed her gaze. The tip of the shovel, sodden blood red, and it oozed down the insides of the salt circle.

Sherlock threw it away immediately. “The spiritual connecting with the physical—no, it’s just a mock-reanimation, it’s not…”

Sentient. Screeches ripped from beneath the gravesites, solid hands clawed somewhere in between life and death, inhuman shrieks and raw festering wounds splitting mouths in three. Skin peeled back from behind their fingernails and kept peeling and Molly gave a dreadful scream and Sherlock yelled, “no, don’t leave the salt circle—“ and he clutched for her arm but Molly rans, and the undead tore after her, howling, wretched vengeance for their tormented misery.

Sherlock watched as they tore out her throat and feast on her oesophagus and with each mouthful they become more human, more healed and his stomach churns and he vomits up the little he ate that morning. They were an orgy in a pile around her and Sherlock ran and they stayed with her and he kept running and looked back and saw her fullformed, naked like the others and gorging herself on their flesh as one of them.

Royal blood didn’t do that.

Royal blood would never do that.

Did this mean he wasn’t Royal blood?

 

Who was he?

 

Molly was dead. He couldn’t go home.

He had to use the only thing he had, to stop James Moriarty. The message his mother left him engraved in the reverse of his mirror in his wardrobe.

James Moriarty is a spider. Spiders eat their females. James Moriarty will eat your heart. Watch out. He ate his son. He grew his son up and he fucked him and he ate him. Tell everyone you know about Carl Powers.

Shouted it from the rooftops. Told everyone he knew. Sally. Donovan. Lestrade. Anderson.

“He’s evil, but he’s your father.”

“Are you sure you haven’t been hit with a befuddlement spell?”

“Who’s Carl Powers? Are you sure you’re not just making this up?”

He was their prince.

Not anymore.

No more.

 

“Oh where, oh where could Sherlock be?” James Moriarty wondered as he prowled the castle corridors.

Whispers. He can guess what.

Boring.

 

 

“Carl Powers.”

Someone had outwitted him.

Someone knew about the murder. Violet never told.

Someone picked up the clues, someone outsmarted and bested and killed Molly. Expressed a reverent personal interest in his catty smokescreen.

Destroyed it, what, jealousy?

He’d never questioned himself to this calibre.

Jim had never thought, had never dared to believe there might be someone else as different as him out there. He’d never let himself hope. He’d never let his heart roar with the promise of unity; only the assurance of killing the worst of those who would always fit like he could never could, some small begrudging goodness that if he couldn’t have friendship then neither could they, neither could the ones who enjoyed it, neither could no one.

I O U. He owed this person, for their challenge, for their threat and their discordant harmony. This potential person.

But now he called Mycroft out, he stroked the glass of his pocket-silver enchanted mirror, until the keen but ultimately enfeebled once ruler stood before him. He slammed Mycroft against the wall like Mycroft had hit him, and grinned fantastic retribution into the depthless stare of his cacophony.

“Mirror mirror,” he growled, smile creeping off of his face. “On the wall. Who’s the fairest –“ brightest smartest extremist finest greatest “of them all?”

Mycroft smiled back. “Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes is the fairest of them all.”

 

 

And James Moriarty said to Mycroft: “if you are lying, I will find you. I will find you and I will skin you.”

But the mirror never lied. Why would it?

 

And the knight went to the king Arthur and said, “I don’t think Sir-Boast-A-Lot’s stories are true at all. I think he’s a great old liar.”

And Sherlock Holmes became the biggest bastard of them all, the longest fall from the tallest cliff on the highest peak called Reichenbach.

 

_I do not show your face, but your deepest and darkest desire._

 

Mycroft put his head in his hands through the strain of magic, because he knew the greatest lies came from the appearance of the truth. “Anthea,” he said, turning to the corporal manifestation of his imprisonment. “I want you to contact Violet Holmes. We have some news to inform her of.”

 

And James Moriarty sent Sebastian Moran the huntsman for Sherlock Holmes’ heart, and his head. He said, “first one to Sherlock Holmes gets the mirror.”

They were all too suspicious, and too afraid to buy the reward, but too trusting of habit his authority.

Kill the half-breed. Destroy the fitz. Mount his corpse. Cut off his dick.

Bring it back to me.

Bring him to me broken.


End file.
